Kenseth Armstead – Spook (2007)
Spook is a multimedia installation project that tells the true story of Armistead Lafayette’s experience as a double-agent for America’s first Director of Central Intelligence, George Washington. The installation consists of several media elements including film trailers, 3-D game graphics and 18th century images. These elements will be staged in combination, on three full-scale, “mock” film sets. The life-size tableaus, handmade and drawn by the artist, will render an immersive abstraction of the espionage landscape that James navigated en route to winning our freedom. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Dave Soldier and Rebecca Cherry – The Complete Victrola Sessions (2007)
“The Complete Victrola Sessions” is an interactive performance piece focusing on the allure and danger of addiction in the 1920s. The work for violin, piano, computer and video uses black and white silent film, neo-virtuoso and surreal music for violin and piano, together with video, musical and audio interfaces. Each section creates a story unique to the characters. Video, musical and audio interfaces are triggered by the performers along with a pre-recorded film creating the “actual” characters of the performance. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Hisao Ihara – The Collapsing Wall (2007)
“The Collapsing Wall”, a video installation, involves a series of war documentary film clips spanning from the early 20th century to the present. The presentation includes a series of synchronized video projections which create a monolithic video projection space. The Collapsing Wall attempts to interpret history and events as patterns. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Julia Heyward – Points of View (2007)
Points of View is an interactive installation that displays three large flat-screens as faux-windows showing competing city and landscapes scenes of feeding frenzies, staged murders, and army maneuvers. These windows’ outdoor scenes are layered with internal/domestic scenes seen nightly in the reflections of the window panes. All three faux windows have movement sensors and a gun as input modules that trigger changes in the window scenarios. The windows meditate on the cyclical nature of life and demonstrate dualities in life. This project was commissioned by Harvestworks and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Andrea Parkins – The Specificity of Objects (or Not) (2007)
This continuously running audio/visual installation will interface a multi-channel audio diffusion system with a poetically and technologically reflexive visual environment (composed of sonified objects, photographs, and projected moving images). Both sonically and visually, the work aims to create purposefully “faulty” structures, built up into dense layers from a variety of sources. Audio recordings will document the specificity of objects as they are set into awkward motion. Through the use of Max/MSP-based generative sound processing programmed to arrive at an indeterminate sonic outcome, an aurality should occur that weaves playful connections between physical objects and their sonification. In addition, the tiny photographs and small video projections situated throughout the installation space will provide multiple, fragmented and flawed representations of the objects. With this movement and sketchy repetition of sound, object, and image in space a slippage of language and meaning occurs: one that encourages an exploration of a new logic of poetic (yet wordless) association.
O+A, Bruce Odland & Sam Auinger – Requiem for Fossil Fuels (2007)
Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O+A) will perform their composition, Requiem for fossil fuels, playing an 8-channel “Orchestra of Cities”, with Hai-Ting Chinn, mezzo soprano; Martha Cluver, soprano; John Young, tenor; and Joshua South, bass. Materials for Requiem for fossil fuels come from O+A’s “alphabet of sounds”. This collection of recordings is the result of an ongoing search for a “Hearing Perspective” of the sounds we make as a culture. Each section of Requiem for fossil fuels uses a location recording and its real-time flow as a cantus firmus. Over this cantus firmus, or baseline song, come soloistic voices of helicopters, jets, traffic, busses, horns, train wheels, footsteps of commuters, sirens: the found “Voices” of a fossil fueled culture organized as music. O+A have constructed this playable digital orchestra of extraordinary sonic voices extracted from cities around the world.
Requiem for fossil fuels is the culmination of twenty years of work by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, listening to and intervening in urban soundscapes. The duo makes large scale sound installations in public spaces by extracting the harmonic material from city noise, filtering it, shaping it, and playing it back. They distill this noise into rich, harmonious chords which transform the perception of space. “Requiem for Fossil Fuels” is presented by Ear to the Earth 2007 and produced by Electronic Music Foundation.
Radio/Guitar – Squall (2007)
Squall [skwawl]-noun 1. a sudden, violent gust of wind, often accompanied by rain, snow, or sleet. 2. a sudden disturbance or commotion. 3.to blow as a squall. -Related forms 1. to cry or scream loudly and violently. 2. to utter in a screaming tone. Using improvisation with instruments, short wave radio, environmental field recordings and electronic transmissions, we, the duo Radio/Guitar, incorporate the surrounding sounds in daily life of the visible and invisible spectrums pulsing in the aural landscape and make music of these interactions. Our proposal is to travel to locations and record where there is drama in the weather and a resulting impact on the social landscape. This soundscape will be the basis for our studio recordings. Radio/Guitar consists of artists Peggy Ahwesh and Barbara Ess, who have produced film, digital media, photography and music. As a duo they mix noisy, unpredictable field recordings and electronic transmissions with instrumental improvisations to create rich soundscapes.